November 25, 2016 · 4:28 pm

The Beyer Brand

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This is a logo-doodle…wouldn’t that make an excellent name for an alien science fiction character?   Logodoodle, Prince of the Black Hole Kingdom.

I have been so obsessed with all the terrible details of the new orange monkey that has taken over our government that I completely forgot about an idea I had for a logo using my family name.  That is, until I began doodling while binging on Penny Dreadful on Netflix.  (Gawd, I have to talk about that show in a post too… horribly wonderful stuff!)  Yes the name-plate art you see above, not inspired by Trump’s gold letter fetish, no, not at all, is merely a doodle.  No rulers were used.  I eyeballed everything and let it flow.  I do admit to going over the pencil drawing in ink and editing at that point.

My family name, you see, is a very old and common German name.  Beyer means “a man from Bavaria” or auf Deutsch, “ein Mann aus Bayern”.  We were originally peasant farmers, but achieved nobility and a coat of arms in the middle ages.  I know this because in 1990 I was invited the to world-wide Beyer family reunion in Munich due to the genealogical research Uncle Skip did into the family name.  They sent me a book and I paid for the book, but did not attend.  (On a teacher’s salary?  Are you kidding me?)

But I was thinking about my brand.  It does have a meaning, and it does stand for something.  I underlined the illuminated letters of the name with a broken sword.  My ancestors were once warlike.  My great uncle died in the US Navy during World War II.   My dad was in the Navy during the Korean Conflict.  But having been a school teacher for so many years, I am dedicated to the belief that conflict is best resolved through wit and negotiation.  I would sooner be killed than have to shoot at another human being.  Of course, that part of the Beyer brand only applies to me.  Both my son the Marine, and my brother the retired Texas prison guard, are gun nuts.  And they are both very good shots.  I don’t recommend getting into serious arguments with them.

My family name also stands for farming and farmer’s values.  We were once stewards of the land.  Both my mother and my father grew up on farms.  I was raised in a small farm town less than five miles from the Aldrich family farms of my grandparents and uncles.  I have worked on farms.  I have shoveled cow poop… a unique thing to look upon as a badge of honor.  My octogenarian parents are living now in my grandparents’ farm house on land that has been in my family for more than 100 years.

My family name also stands for service.  I am not the only teacher in the clan.  My mother and two of my cousins are long-time registered nurses and all have seen the craziness of the ER.  (And I don’t mean by watching the television show with Clooney in it.)  I have a brother who was a prison guard and a sister who is a county health inspector.  We put the welfare of others before our own.  Our success in life has been measured by the success of the communities we serve.

While it is true that I could never make money off the Beyer brand the way gold-letter-using Mr. Trump has, I think it is safe to say, “My brand is priceless.”

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November 24, 2016 · 4:46 pm

Lie la Lie

I suppose it is ironic that on Thanksgiving Day I am posting about lies.  After all, I really am thankful for the lies in some very specific ways.  Paul Simon’s song is the reason for the odd title and underscores the feeling I am trying to explain;

Yes, I am grateful that most of what the orange-faced man has said on the campaign trail has turned out to be lies.  I thank the Lord that the great ball of cantaloupe-colored mouth-flatulence has indicated he might not actually pull out of the Paris Accords on climate change.  That little item being a lie may save our entire planet and all life on Earth.  I thank the Lord that the orangutan president has had second thoughts about prosecuting Hillary Clinton for crimes she didn’t actually commit.

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I thank the Lord that the goal of repealing Obamacare is just a lie.  My diabetes is grateful too.  King Donald, seen in the photo above pitching snake oil and bananas to an innocent member of the American public, has strongly indicated he will keep all the good parts of Obamacare… and will basically just change the name to Trumpacare.  Of course, he will be preserving high premiums and profits for the insurance industry as well.

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I have a strong suspicion the wall is just a lie as well.  In fact, the nature of President Cinnamon Hitler is such that if he is trying to keep alien secrets about Area 51 with the same talent for keeping secrets he displayed on the bus video and in his formation of a cabinet in his administrative transition, we may soon know the complete truth about Roswell.

But I’m sure you realize by now that all this is in the manner of lies and jests.  In reality I am Paul Simon’s boxer;

Yes, I am beaten down by life.  I have been lied to.  I have been tricked.  And if I only could, I would give that monkey such a punch!  But we are all the boxer, all scarred.  And we all together vastly outnumber the monkey’s minions.  I may not live to see it, but it will always be a possibility, for as long as the fighter still remains.  And I am thankful for that.

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November 23, 2016 · 4:51 pm

Terrible Trumpkin Trolls

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A new Sith Lord has arisen to take charge of the new GOP Totally Dominant Empire of Evil.  He has successfully usurped the throne of power even though the Democratic candidate actually got over a million more votes than he did.

And one of the most surprising things about it is how accidentally the pieces of the Republican Empire seem to have fallen into place.

Lord Trump has benefitted from several evil and self-serving plots that the Republicans have been advancing since the rule of Lord Darth Ronny.  Reagan appointed Scalia of the Many Scales to the Supreme Court.  Scalia and Roberts (a minion appointed by Darth George W. the Rodeo Clown) created the Citizen’s United plan to bathe evil candidates in blood money from billionaires.  They also conspired to loosen the grip of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to allow voter suppression to run rampant in places like Florida, Texas, and North Carolina (two of which should’ve gone blue instead of red without the interference).  The FBI, led by Republican minion Comey, managed to keep the email scandal alive right up until the very week of the election even though they had to admit no evidence of wrong-doing was ever uncovered.  And it seems that the Russian hackery of emails and the publishing of them by Wikileaks might even be connected to statistical anomalies from districts where electronic voting machines were used.  Clinton may have lost 30,000 votes dropped by voting machines in Pennsylvania where she lost the State by 27,000.

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Of course, the victory conditions were not really set up to benefit Donald Trump.  The Republicans had intended all along to get a more competent Sith apprentice into the seat of ascendancy like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or even, if forced to, a (shudder) moderate like John Kasich.  But Trump used incendiary rhetoric to fill the downtrodden masses who are suffering from the demise of the middle class with hatred and blame-bombs, effectively turning them into a vast army of Trolls.  And, unfortunately for the rest of us, Trumpkin Trolls are much better shots than stormtroopers ever were.  All that time in the NRA paid off.

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So, simply by accidentally taking the power for himself, Lord Trump has killed us all.  Yes, I mean literally.  He will pull us out of climate-change agreements and revitalize the use of coal to turn this planet into Venus where it is more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface due to rampant greenhouse effects.

And he has plans to put racists, warhawks, misogynists, and criminals in the highest positions of power.  If you don’t believe me, investigate the background of Sith Apprentice Steve Bannon even just a little bit.   He claims darkness is a good thing.

“Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing,” Bannon said in an interview published Friday, his first outside of Breitbart since the election.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/steve-bannon-donald-trump-hollywood-reporter-interview/

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One might imagine that Trump Ice Cream would be Nazi flavored.

I know people who voted for Trump.  They are not racists and do not share some of the hateful ideas these Trolls embrace as their own.  I imagine they feel betrayed already by Lord Trump.  If they don’t, they should.

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Trump celebrated his rise to the top of the Sith leadership with a scary Trump-head cake.  Presumably during the celebration, at some point, they ate his head.

 

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November 22, 2016 · 2:41 pm

Stardusters… Canto 22

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Canto Twenty-Two – In Golden Wing One, Fighting for Life

It first appeared over the horizon and the orange-brown clouds of the atmosphere as a sort of bright star-thingy.  It was an enemy space ship.  Farbick couldn’t identify it any more than that.  It was shooting at him with very large slug-throwers, cannons as the Earthers called them.

“Why are they attacking?” asked Biznap of the fat Galtorrian.

“Since the last war started, every ship you meet is an enemy craft.  We won’t survive if we don’t shoot them first.”  Stabharh didn’t wait for the fat one to answer.  Farbick supposed it was because war was the little lizard’s area of expertise.

“Well, come on!” squealed the fat Galtorrian, “before they kill me!   Shoot them!  Shoot them now!”

“We’ll be all right,” said Farbick, rolling away from the cannon fire.

“We will not!  That’s a top of the line space ship from the Overlord’s private fleet.  They will kill us just because we’re here!”  The fat fool Bahbahr was so frightened he squeaked when he talked… like a frightened child who was about to soil his pants.

“Don’t worry,” soothed Starbright with her calming female voice, “Farbick knows how to do this better than any Telleron pilot I know.”

Suddenly the cannon shot that Farbick couldn’t dodge came directly at the view screen.

“Aagh!  We are dead!” screeched Bahbahr.

The shot, however, exploded a fair distance away against the ship’s energy field.

“How did you do that?” asked Stabharh in amazement, and possibly enviously.

“Higher tech level than our enemy,” said Biznap smugly.  “Your people don’t even know how to generate a force field, let alone breach one with projectiles.”

“All right!” cried the fat Galtorrian.  “Now shoot him down.”

“Can’t do that.  We don’t carry ship to ship weaponry,” said Farbick.  “Defense only… the explorer’s code.”

“What?” growled Stabharh, “he’ll go back to Senator Tedhkruhz and relay our location.”

“He most certainly will not!” cried Biznap.  The Commander reached over to the proper switch on his control panel and flipped the cloaking mechanism on.

They heard the electric buzz of the device and saw the tell-tale shimmer across the viewing screen.  Moments later the enemy space craft began to drift away in a confused spiral search pattern.

“Why did they leave like that?” asked the fat Galtorrian.

“They lost visual contact and had to give up,” said Farbick.  “They can’t track what they don’t see.”

“You can be invisible?” crooned Stabharh.

“Of course we can,” crowed Biznap proudly.

“You must teach us this!” said the little lizard warrior.

“Now, hold on, junior,” said Biznap, “We still have an agreement to work out.  Are we still prisoners?”

“Well,” said the fat one, stalling, “we must still decide that matter.”

“Open to negotiation?” asked Biznap.

“Yes,” said Bahbahr in an oily voice.  “Definitely looking forward to bargaining.”

“We need coordinates to land,” said Starbright.  “You still haven’t explained where we are going.”

“I wanted to go to my secret base on Gundahl, the second moon of Galtorr Prime,” said the fat one.  “The bad guys will not find us there.  And very few of our enemies still have any kind of flight or space travel capability.”

“Which is the second moon?” asked Farbick with the navigation program pulled up on his pilot’s main computer.

“Gundahl is the big irregular one.  Rekhpahree had a base there too before the war.  The chunk missing from the moon is the result of Senator Tedhkruhz blasting it from orbit.  Melted moon-bits rained down on Galtorr Prime for a ten-cycle after that.”

“Okay,” said Farbick, “I have the moon locked in to the computer, but where on the moon?”

“The entrance to my base,” said Bahbahr, “is under the Silica Falls near the Sea of Black Bones on that big hunk of stone.”

“I see it,” said Farbick.  “We will go there directly.  But tell me, why do the names on your home-world all sound like a horror movie set?”

“You might as well ask, why do Galtorrians hate each other with such passion?” said Stabharh.

“Or why do Galtorrians eat each other after they have slain Galtorrians in battle?” said Bahbahr.

“Yes,” said Farbick.  “I want to know that too.  Why do you people eat each other?”

“We wish to absorb the fighting spirit of the defeated warrior,” said Stabharh.

“Personally,” said Bahbahr, somewhat cattily, “I just like the taste.”

“Yes,” agreed Stabharh, “I do also.  Especially in savory blood sauce.”

“Savory blood sauce?” asked Starbright as if she were about to be ill.

“Yeah, you know,” said Bahbahr, “What the Earthers call ketchup in those Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello movies.”

*****

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November 21, 2016 · 5:05 pm

Thank God for Joe Biden

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I am still reeling from the election result and suffering a bad, bad, super-icky, down-on-my-luck, and in-poor-health sort of holiday week.  I will try to make humor out of all things going wrong in a later post… once I am finished surviving it.

In the meantime, I realize I am not the only one having a bad week in a bad month in a bad year.  And I really appreciated the wealth of internet memes that use Joe Biden’s unique persona and sense of humor to make me smile in the middle of the darkness.

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Me and a number of my like-minded Facebook friends (many of whom I have never met outside of the internet) have been passing these things back and forth to help ease some of the pain and make life a bit less grim.  I confess to laughing really hard at a couple of these.

I really hope the badger and duct tape thing is an actual plan being carried out.  Although, I know life doesn’t actually work that way outside of the funny papers.

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November 20, 2016 · 5:16 pm

Writing Every Day

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These are volumes 3&4 of my daily journal that I have kept since the 1980’s.

Writing every single day is something I have been doing since 1975, my senior year in high school.  It is why I claim to be a writer, even though I have never made enough money at it to even begin to think of myself as a professional writer.  I kept a journal/diary/series of notebooks that I filled with junk I wrote and doodles in the margins up until the middle 90’s when I began to put all my noodling into computer files instead of notebooks.  I have literally millions of words piled in piles of notebooks and filling my hard drive to the point of “insufficient memory” errors on my laptop.  I am now 60 years old and have been writing every day for 42 years.

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There are days in the past where I only wrote a word, or a sentence or two.  But there were a lot of words besides the words in my journal.  I started my first novel in college.  I completed it the summer before my first teaching job in 1981.  I put it the closet, never to be thought of again, except when I needed a good cringe and cry at how terrible a writer I once was.  I have been starting, stopping, percolating, piecing together, and eventually completing novel projects ever since… each one goofier and more wit-wacky than the last.  So I have a closet full of those too.

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It would be wrong of me to suggest that my journals are only for words.  As a cartoon-boy-wannabee I doodle everywhere in margins and corners and parts of pages.  Sometimes the doodle is an afterthought.  Sometimes it precedes the paragraph.  Sometimes it is directly connected to the words and their meaning.

Sometimes the work of art is the main thing itself.

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But always, the habit of writing down words and ideas every single day takes precedence over every other part of my day.  That’s the main reason I am stupid enough to think of myself as a writer even though I don’t make a living by writing.

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But I did put my words into my profession too.  As a teacher of writing, I wrote with and to my students.  I did that for 31 years as a classroom teacher, and two years as a substitute.  I required them each to keep a daily journal (though they only got graded for the ones they wrote in class, and then only for reaching the amount of words assigned).  We shared the writing aloud in class, making only positive comments.  I wrote every assignment I gave them, including the journal entries.  They got to see and hear what I could write, and it often inspired them or gave them a structure to hang their own ideas upon.  And often they liked what I wrote and were surprised by it almost as much as I liked and was surprised by theirs.   Being a writer was never a total waste of time and effort.

So am I telling you that if you want to be writer you have to write every day too?  If I have to tell you that… you have totally missed the point.

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November 19, 2016 · 3:43 pm

Scary Driving Stuff

Yesterday evening we didn’t pass a milestone… we kinda ran into it.

Number Two Son Henry is about to become a licensed driver in December.  Thursday night he finished his last drive time with driving school instructors.  We have to wait for the road test, but nothing really stands in his way.  He has been repeatedly practicing driving in Carrollton and Lewisville city traffic.  Over the summer and into the fall he has compiled hours worth of driving experience.   But, no matter how experienced, nearly everyone has at least one accident during their driving life.

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We had stopped at Wendy’s to get dinner after school, the three of us, the Princess, Henry, and I.  My diabetes was on the warpath yesterday, and I made the mistake of eating too much of a baked potato.  So, I asked him to drive even though it was Friday evening rush hour traffic.  He assured me he could handle it.

Well, we made the first turn onto the street on a yellow light and he accidentally caught the median curb with the driver’s side wheel.  Then, as we bounced into the traffic stopped at the next red light, we crunched into the backside of a lady’s car as it innocently waited for the light to turn green.

The air bags did not deploy.  There was no blood and death and fire.  My biggest worry was the fact that we were all shaken by the incident.  My hands were shaking anyway from blood sugar problems.  So, we put the emergency lights on.  I stupidly turned them off again.  Then the lady appeared at the driver’s side window with a look of utter horror on her face, her hands shaking worse than mine.  We exchanged insurance information.  She called the police to get an accident report, but they were busy and told us that if we could drive away from it, we should, and they would look into it later.  So, Henry realized the emergency lights were off and turned them back on.  We took pictures of the accident (see above).  Then we drove both cars into the Spring Creek Barbecue parking lot.  The damage turned out to be minimal, consisting of scratched paint on both cars.  There didn’t even appear to be dents.  Henry then drove us homeward, and we got him to work on time.  So it was basically a real-life jump scare that proved our hearts could still beat way faster than normal.  And Henry got the first-accident milestone done with, before he even got his license.  How fun!  But let’s not do it again soon.

 

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November 18, 2016 · 3:53 pm

Upon Further Reflection…

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My 60th Birthday Self Portrait

Time dictates lots of things.  I am not now even the ghost of what I was back then.  I look more like Santa Claus than my father or my grandfathers ever did.  You may notice that, even with glasses on, I have to squint in order to see who I really am.

It is normal to do a bit of self-examination after a milestone birthday.  But I never claimed to be normal.  In fact, I doubt after the results of the recent election that you could say I was anything like the common man at all.

I was raised a Christian in a Midwest Methodist Church from a small Iowa farm town.  But I have since become something of an agnostic or atheist… not because I don’t believe in God, but because I don’t believe anyone can tell me who God is or how he wants me to be other than me.  But I am also not at the center of the universe the way most religious people believe.  I believe that all people are born good and have to work at being bad by making self-centered choices and making excuses to themselves for behaving in ways that they know are wrong.  God doesn’t forgive my sins because he doesn’t have to.  I am tolerant of all people and most things about them.  To sum up this paragraph, I am nothing like the dedicated Christians I know and grew up among.  The actions of the new, in-coming government and dominant political party convince me that intolerance, self-interest, and rationalizations are the norm.

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Sometimes my nose gets really red and my hair bozos out for no particular reason.

I deal with the problems of life by making jokes and forging ahead with carefully considered plans in spite of the doubts others express about my abilities, my choices, and my sanity.  I prefer to do something rather than to sit idly by and do nothing.  Yet, I never do anything without agonizing over the plan before I take that step.  And like the recent election, things usually go wrong.  I have failed at far more things in my life than I have succeeded at.

I am told I think too much.  I hear constantly that I make things too complicated.  People say I should do practically everything in a different way… usually their way.  But I inherited a bit of stubbornness from my square-headed German ancestors.  In fact, I inherited Beyer-stubborn from my Grandma Beyer.  In all the time I knew her, I never saw her change her mind about anything… ever.  She was a Republican who thought all Republicans were like President Eisenhower, even Ronald Reagan…  but not Barry Goldwater.  Someone convinced her that Goldwater was a radical.  That was almost as bad as being a Democrat.  I, however, have strayed from the Beyer-stubborn tradition enough to change my mind once in a while, though only after carefully considering the facts on both sides of the question.  Nixon changed me from a Republican like Grandma into a Democrat.  Fortunately, Grandma Beyer loved me too much to disown me.

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In my retirement, I have gotten even more artistical than I was before.  This is a picture of me with my fictional child Valerie.

So how do I summarize this mirror-staring exercise now that I have passed the 500-word goal?  Probably by stating that I do have a vague idea of who I am.  But I promise to keep looking in the mirror anyway.  One never knows what he will see in the map of his soul that he wears on his face.

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November 17, 2016 · 4:16 pm

‘Appie Berfday, Mickey!

Today I am 60.  Yes, the day before Mickey Mouse celebrates his 88th birthday, this Mickey turned 60.  I have got the gray hair to prove it… or prove I was actually a public school teacher anyway.  But one would think that 60 years of survival on this goofy planet ought to provide me with some wisdom as well.

What wisdom do I have to share?  Hmm… let me think;

  1. I know for danged certain that teaching is an extraordinarily hard job.
  2. I know that kids are worth it… no matter what color they are, what language they speak, or where they come from. (I have always been partial to the blue ones from the Crab Nebula.)

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    Ain’t I pretty at 60?

  3. I know that I have to be a Democrat for politics. I believe in a government that builds things for all people to use, protects people from profit-hungry predators with laws, treats all people as equal, and respects every person and every person’s rights… you know, all the things that make me a dangerous radical to my Republican friends.
  4. I also know that the Democratic Party is a vast tepid poop farm where you have to choose which poop to make a government out of. I try to find the really hot poop.  Hillary wasn’t hot enough.
  5. I know I have the Republicans in Iowa and Texas to thank for the gift of Donald Trump as president. I hope you Republicans and your new president will be very happy with each other.  I know you deserve each other.
  6. I know that Ted Cruz is actually the Zodiac Killer… if by “actually” you mean in some impossible way he is metaphorically and comically the Zodiac Killer. It still sounds right to me though.

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    The Trump administration is choosing cabinet posts to put its best people in.

  7. I know there is no actual proof of aliens held prisoner in Area 51, but I believe in them anyway.
  8. I know that with six incurable diseases and being a cancer survivor I should never have reached 60, but here I am anyway.
  9. I know that Mickey Mouse loves Minnie, and Popeye loves Olive Oyl, but neither couple will ever get married. And that’s okay.
  10. I know that all people are naked under their clothes… but I try not to think about that too much. I blush far too easily.
  11. I know I will never write the Great American Novel I have somewhere inside me… but somebody will… someday… and then the world will end the next day.
  12. I know that smiling and laughing make you live longer than frowning and being mad, but it is really hard to say which way is harder to manage on a daily basis. I fear frowning is easier.
  13. I know that I cannot end this list on the number 13.
  14. I know that I have had many ups and downs in life, probably twice as many downs, but I have no regrets. I have done good things.  I have been a good person.  I hope I still am.
  15. I know I have passed 500 words and should probably shut up now.

“You know, Mickey, that none of these things are actually what you could call true wisdom, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, but knowing that makes me wiser than most men.”

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November 16, 2016 · 3:29 pm

That Mickey Doo Picture

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I never really explained the picture I have been drawing since the election mess began.  I’m not sure I could have before now.  It was a place to escape to.  I have been having health troubles that make me fear the end is near.  Will it be a stroke?  An infarction?  But I am hoping for stroke, though only if it is a stroke of genius.  Infarction is too silly a word for heart-goes-boom.  Not that I am immune to silly.  And what’s with the phrase, “Mickey Doo” in the titles?

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If Mickey draws Scooby Doo, is that a Mickey Doo?

The drawing started out with the character of the Telleron boy from the novel Stardusters and Space Lizards.  The frog-like humanoid aliens in that story, the Tellerons, have been living in my imagination since I was a boy.  Either that or they really did invade Iowa when I was a boy… my friend Robert testifies that he remembers the invasion… but he was kind of a gullible kid that believed anything I told him.  Davalon the Telleron tadpole was a main character in the novel Catch a Falling Star.  Once I drew him, I felt I had to add another novel character.  Anneliese is a living gingerbread girl, brought to life by a fairy spell.  So she is literally one tough cookie.  “Literally” because she is a literary character in the novel I am currently working on, Recipes for Gingerbread Children.  She was created by Grandma Gretel, a holocaust survivor with magical baking skills, for the express purpose of helping the good fairies that live in Iowa to defeat the evil ones, some of whom acquired their evil spirits from the Nazis in Germany.  And finally I included Francois, the singing boy from the novel Sing Sad Songs.  He is an orphan from France that comes to live with the dysfunctional family of his nearest relatives after losing his own family in a traffic accident.  He manages to charm the whole Iowa town with his musical ability and put a serious dent in the loneliness and isolation that his family has fallen into.  So, in a way, these three characters represent the eccentric way I go about fighting the war between good and evil.  I depend on happy accidents, magic, and music… things that don’t exist without love.  And it is all because I doodle when I’m hurting and things haven’t gone my way.  Turning hurt into artwork is a strategy that has helped me for 60 years.

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